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Sale Creek, 2017 Schedule Week 1: @ Sunbright Week 2: Grace Baptist Academy (Finley Stadium) Week 3: South Pittsburg (Finley Stadium) Week 4: Bye Week 5: @ Copper Basin Week 6: Pickett County (Finley Stadium) Week 7: @ Lookout Valley Week 8: @ Clay County Week 9: Zion Christian (Finley Stadium) Week 10: Wartburg (Finley Stadium) Week 11: @ Whitwell

I don't post often, but I can answer that. TSSAA informed teams, a couple of years ago actually, that the first week of the season would not be called "Week 0" any longer. Instead of Week 0 - Week 10, it would simply be Week 1 - Week 11.

I was in the pressbox, and had told Coach Cox that it looked like #10 was not going back in the game because they were working on his leg but i obviously couldn't tell what was wrong. Then when ours got hurt, Coach Cox tells me in the headset that the guy stabalizing our player's leg was the father of #10. Our player was released from the hospital. They have to go back to see a surgeon this week. Dont know yet if surgery will be requirred, they want to see how it looks when he goes back. Also have been told that it was not compound because it didnt come through, but was just a bad break. I have watched the film and it was just a football deal. 2 of your guys and 2 of ours all got tangled up, just one of those things that unfortunately happens sometimes. We would also like to Thank South Pittsburg's administration, coaching staff, and everyone else that flew into action so quickly when this injury happened. I read the boards and I know you guys get alot of trash thrown your way, but all we saw was a class act from top down last night. We always point to South Pittsburg as an example of what small schools can do if they are willing to work.

I hope South Pittsburg's #10 heals quickly. Our #1 that was injured has a compound fracture and is at the hospital. Last update was that that they were going to sedate him to straighten it for x-rays and then probably prep for surgery. Good luck on the rest of your season. Sale Creek OC

Good morning South Pittsburg fans. Time for my once yearly post on CoachT. First, to Roy: Murphy's survey came via email this year instead of in the mail, and the HCDE email server decided it was SPAM and put it in the SPAM folder where it stayed. We'll make sure we look for it next year. Once again this season keeping kids out and playing has been a challenge. 12 quit after spring practice. Alot of kids think that football should only go when school is in session. They quit or dont play because they dont want to put in the summer work, and then they want to show up when school starts and say I am ready to play. It may be killing our record, but we just dont think thats fair to the kids that have put in all the work. We have flashes of brillance, a half here, or a quarter there, but we can not seem to get over the hump to put a complete game together. We looked great vs Concord Christian but that was mainly due to us having experience. I have to hand it to the kids that keeping coming back week after week. We have no locker room, no equipment room, no home field, and only an old hay field thats more dirt than grass to practice on, but the ones that are left keep coming back. Believe it or not, looking forward to Friday. We always hold South Pitt football up as an example of what a small school can accomplish when everyone is committed. See you on Friday at Finley. Coach Shipley Asst. HC, OC Sale Creek Panthers

I would love to eat a fudge round with you, but my wife won't let me have a Red Bull. We have some kids that are fast, but we are not always fast in the right direction. We don't always block in the right direction either, but we're working on it.

No, that's not quite right. I think it was actually 54 - 0. Edit: Maybe is was 51. All I know is I was wet and tired and sick.

Good afternoon gentlemen. Looking forward to coming over to South Pittsburg this Friday. When we launched our program, we told our players that they didn't have to look any further than right in our region to see what small school football can be when the school, players, and community are behind it 100%. Hopefully one of these years we'll get a stadium built here in Sale Creek, and hopefully our community will get behind us the way that ya'll do. Finley Stadium is nice, but its a long drive for a "Home" game. We're better than last year, though so far the scoreboard doesn't show it. Last year it was hard to just get the kids lined up where they were supposed to be, let alone do what they were supposed to do. This year, we're getting lined up right, and for the most part we know what we're supposed to do, but its the actually doing it that is hit or miss. We're still young. Last year our kids football knowledge was about middle school level. This year, we're probably playing at Freshman / JV level. Met Coach Moore last fall. He's definitely a class act. Before we come play you guys though, we have to take Red Boiling Springs tonight at Finley. (Had to play on Saturday because UTC women's soccer played last night.) If you're bored and want to get wet, come on over and watch. Game time 7:30. SC OC PS: user name is a little misleading, but I played for Soddy Daisy back in the 80s, and still cheer for them even though I'm at SC.

Good Morning. I enjoy reading all the posts on here weekly, though I rarely comment. Looking forward to coming over to Marion County Friday night. It is what it is. We will be bringing 21 active Varsity players. We have 8 out with injuries this week, 4 of those season ending. The thing about playing schools like Marion County and South Pittsburg is simply this. These programs are great examples of what small school football can be when everyone buys in and believes. I tell our players all the time, they put their football equipment on the same way you do, they have just been doing it for alot longer. Yes, we have been scored on alot. Yes, we have not scored very much. But, we are learning every week. We focus on winning the next play, regardless of what the scoreboard says. If we pick up 4 yards, thats a win. If we tackle a ball carrier for less than a 4 yard gain, thats a win. If knock down a pass, thats a win. If we complete a pass, thats a win. As our head coach tells the team, if you focus on winning the next play, then you can win a drive. Win enough drives, you win a quarter. Win a 2 quarters, and you have won the half. Pretty soon, if you just focus on winning plays, you may have won enough plays to win a game. The scores have been ugly, the continuous clock merciful. But, we will be there, and we will play. I will call plays. Sometimes my guys will go where they are supposed to, sometimes they will not. Then, I will call another play, and we will take the film home and learn something from it. Have a nice day, see you Friday night. Looking forward to seeing #1 in person, from what I have read, he's a great person as well as football player.

We have flashes of brillance which we typically surround with shooting ourselves in the foot. I think we will get better each week as we gain more experience, but its hard to simulate game speed in practice, especially this week with the amount of speed the Pirates have. So, it is what it is. Coaches can't play the game for them, they have to learn it.

Kickoff scheduled for 8 PM (eastern) 7 PM (central) at Finley Stadium. South grandstand will be the only grandstand open (thats the home side).

We had a choice. Launch Varsity this year, or play JV for 2 years. we had 12 seniors and 11 juniors wanting to play, so we lauched varsity. 8 seniors and 3 juniors quit after spring practice, 6 of which who were projected to start both ways, and several others would have been big contributers. It is what it is. I am looking forward to our players seeing what a small school can do when they work for it. Its a lesson we need to learn. See you Friday.

I would be willing to bet that the Sale Creek coach didn't get a survey for the Murphy's Fair book.

Should be offcially wrapped up by the middle of next week.

Believe it or not, Finley is very reasonable from a cost standpoint, even for a small school like us.. We were having a very hard time finding a place to play our home games. We were going to have to use 3 or 4 different places because there was nowhere available that we could use for all 4 of our home games. Somebody mentioned Finley Stadium to me and I thought "why not, they can only say no." So I called them and we worked it out. So if everything gets finalized, we will be seeing you guys there on Friday night, Sep. 6th.

Sale Creek is currently working on a deal to play all of our home games at Finley. I would say 95% sure it will happen at this point.

Spring Practice went pretty well overall. We still have alot to learn but we are looking forward to summer workouts and practice. This summer we will be able to slow down a little and focus on techniques that still need alot of work. We put alot in during spring because we had a scrimmage scheduled, so now we can go back and fine tune what we have in already, and then add in a few more things. We are playing in three 7 on 7s this summer to help out our passing game and coverage schemes. We scrimmaged Midway and they won the varsity portion 4 to 1, and the JV portion 1 - 0, but we were happy with what we saw from our players. Midway hit a couple big throws when we let receivers get behind us, but overall we were happy with our effort on both offense and defense. We made mistakes, but were making them at full speed instead of hesitating. Overall, a good spring to build on.

Week 1 of Spring Practice complete. We have 41 out for practice in all grades. The players are very entusiastic and we couldn't ask for more effort to be given. The effort level is fantastic. About half of them have never played before. They are making lots of mistakes, but are learning from them. My QBs are already able to turn to me immediately and tell me what they should have done as opposed to what they actually did, and I tell them to keep working, doing it right the first time will come with repetition. We scrimmage Midway this Friday, so that will tell us were we are at. Our goal for the scrimmage is for our kids to play their assignments and do what they are supposed to do.

To answer a couple questions.... Our weight room is in serious need of an upgrade, but for now we are making due with what we have and will upgrade as funds become available. We are in line for a new high school to be built, but best case that is still 4-5 years away. We begin spring practice next Monday, May 6th, and wrap up with a scrimmage at Midway on Friday May 17th. We will be practicing on the baseball field. We have a practice field being worked on which will be right beind the school. Hopefully it will be ready by fall, if not we continue to use the baseball field.

We do not have a field yet. We will be borrowing fields for our 4 home games this fall. All of our scrimmages and all but 1 of our JV games are scheduled Away for that same reason. We hope to have a field ready for the 2014 season.

Head Coach: Ron Cox (last 4 years at Soddy Daisy Middle School, last 3 as Head Coach) Asst. H. C / Offensive Coordinator / Quarterbacks: Roy Shipley (last 3 years at SDMS as OC, played offensive tackle for Army, spent 1 year as Grad. Assistant at Army with O-Line prior to military committment) Defensive Coordinator / Middle Linebackers: Rickey Gilley (Ridgeland High School - JV Defensive Coordinator, played linebacker at Maryville College and Strong Safety at University of Cumberlands) Offensive and Defensive Line Coach: Justin Pugh (Soddy Daisy High School) WR / DB Coach: Micah Hughes (Baylor) RB / Outside Linebackers: Mike Montgomery (Tyner High School) We plan to play a full JV schedule along with our varsity schedule.

The Sale Creek community is very supportive. They have wanted a team for a while, now, especially since the middle school program launched. Of course there are those that don't like it, and thats to be expected, because they have always been a basketball and baseball school. The kids coming out of middle school's only choice to keep playing football was to co-op with Hixson High School, which is a 25 minute drive, or transfer schools. We have just over 50 kids working out right now. It would be too early to talk about the offense and defense to be employed by the Panthers. So far, the coaches have only seen the players in the weight room, working out and conditioning. As you well know, it doesn't matter what you look like in the weight room, or running drills, when the pads go on, things change. The coaching staff is taking an open minded approach to what we will run. We have to choose a system on offense and defense that fits our players. We can not cram our systems onto players that don't fit well and expect success. As the O. C., I can tell you, I am ready to install and teach anything from a Shotgun, 5 wide passing attack, to a double tight end Power I. Whatever fits the kids is what we will run. Our D. C. thinks the same way. We have athletes, for sure, but their football knowledge and skills are low. Once we see the kids in spring practice, alot of decisions will be made. We have multiple directions we are prepared to go in, and as a staff, we will decide which way to go once we see them in action. Sorry that doesn't tell you much, but thats the situation.

Good afternoon. I can clear a couple of things up for you guys. Initially the plan was to launch as a J. V. program. We wanted to play 1 year of JV, and then move the program to varsity. This was because of 15 current sophmores who will be juniors signed up to play next fall. But, when we contacted TSSAA, we found out that 2013 was the first year of a two year scheduling cycle. If we launched JV, it would have to be for 2 years. Those 15 juniors would have been allowed to play as juniors, but would not have been allowed to play as seniors, since we would still be a JV program in the fall of 2014. While we were mulling this over, and already thinking it wouldn't be fair to those kids to let them play their junior year but not their senior year, the coaching staff was approached by a group of 12 rising seniors that wanted to be a part of the team. They said they would be the practice team, or the scout team, and would do whatever they could do to be able to be part of Sale Creek's first high school football team even though they knew that they would never get to play in any games. So, the coaches sat down with the principal, and the decision was made to launch varsity and not tell these kids that they were too old to play. We contacted TSSAA, and were approved to launch as a varsity program. We are looking forward to playing this fall. We have a steep learning curve with most of the kids, and we know that we are going to be facing some very talented and far more experienced teams. Our middle school program is only 3 years old. Most of our juniors and seniors have not played in 2 - 3 years minimum, and some not since kid's club. Some coaches would say that is too much to overcome. However, when a new coach takes over a program, he often has to change the way the players did things, or break bad habits in order to implement their systems. Our kids don't have any bad habits to break, they just have to learn what we teach them. One step at a time.

Ron Cox, new program at Sale Creek High School. Launching as a varsity program.